Vinyl, CD's and Digital Files Accumulated Over A Lifetime

I don’t think the 8TB is full. It’s just the total space @lalitk has. I do own some DSD albums that are about 2-4GB each.

I’ve gone the same route where I went from 600 to 400 vinyl about six months ago. Luckily I’ve kept my digital library well organized and am selective about the quality of the music and the quality of the file, probably at 1000 albums or less. The usability of a network player’s search and browse functions become very important in delivering a frictionless experience. 

“8 TB for 500 albums?”

@larryi

The 500 is the number for my ‘elite’ physical media that is in addition to what’s on my 8TB’s SSD. The bulk of SSD drives holds SACD’s rips, DSD downloads and 1000+ CD rips. I didn’t ripped everything collected over the years, if it didn’t sound good; it was tossed over to Goodwill.

And I buy on average 8-10 DSD downloads each month which eats up lots of storage :-)

@larryi, either your math skills aren't to the par or reading skills.

It's actually 500 media sources (LP/CD) + everything else on 8TB.

I will never give up my CDs LPs DVDs, etc. Some of my CDs are from the early 80s and still play perfectly. How many hard drives do you own that lasted 40 years, or even 10 years? Hard drives are not archival. HDs crash, and sometimes we don’t back things up properly. Also personally when I have all my music tucked away on hard drives I stopped listening to it. Out of sight out of mind. Seeing all my CDs lined up on my bookshelf draws me in and I get excited about putting an album on, looking at the cover art, reading the liner notes. The ritual of putting the disc in the CD changer or the vinyl on the turntable just adds to the pleasure of listening to music, not pushing a mouse button.

But hey if anyone is trying to unload their CDs drop me a line.

I keep my CDs—this means I keep the art, notes, libretti, etc.—but it is certainly the case that it is FAR easier to browse the digital files of the CDs than the CD’s themselves.  I can browse by genre, by artist, composers, etc.; I can quickly sample recordings, I can find other related recordings much more easily than squinting at the spines of my 5,000 CDs.